


“The Fallen” - Solo: A Star Wars Story

by SilentFaction00



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: BAMF Darth Vader, Jedi Knights, Past Lando Calrissian/Han Solo, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Pre-Star Wars: A New Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 21:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14198289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentFaction00/pseuds/SilentFaction00
Summary: Han Solo joins his mentor Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and a ragtag crew of criminal mercenaries that include Val (Thandie Newton), Lando (Donald Glover)[spoiler] and his droid partner L3-37, and his childhood friend and fellow con-artist, Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) on a heist of a freight train on Vandor en route to deliver stolen merchandise to a a scion Hutt rival. The hiring client also requests Tobias to rescue two prisoners being held aboard. A competing client, who wants to sell the cargo on the black market, has also reportedly hired mercenaries of their own. Meanwhile, Sith Lord Darth Vader heads to Vandor on orders of the Emperor himself.





	“The Fallen” - Solo: A Star Wars Story

A squall whipped Beckett's face raw as he lumbered toward the rear car of the train. He was limping, having only barely survived his melee encounter with the alien bounty hunter - Enfys Nest - that had nearly foiled their extraction. Thankfully, Lando and L3 had arrived at the rendezvous with the Falcon as planned, taking Chewie and the erudite artifact with them. The mysterious foe, likely on the payroll of the Black Sun or one of Jabba's rival Hutt clans, had abandoned his crusade against Beckett upon seeing Chewbacca make his break for the Falcon. His years as a veteran cheat taught him to never hinge his success on a single exit strategy. If all went according to plan, the buyer would have her artifact and her prisoners, or she might just end up with one and not the other. Credits would flow in any event, and by now, Lando would be well on his way back to Tattooine.

Razor sharp cordilleras, encrusted with methane snow, flanked him on either side as he lumbered toward the escape hatch, where Han and Qi'ra would climb up top to meet him with the rescued prisoners. Val and their four-armed alien accomplice would decouple the rear car and divert them all at the next junction to safety, unless, of course, something went wrong. And just as he had that thought Beckett heard the hatch open and noticed Han's mottled hair jostling in the cross winds. He was followed by Qi'ra, outfitted in her crimson battle gear, and the two prisoners, wrapped in simple grey cowls. The elder of the two, a war veteran of some kind judging by the blaster scoring etched across her cheek and eyelid, took point and approached Beckett. The younger prisoner, a Zabrak, whose ivory horns ringed his hood, tailed the other closely.

"Everything is going as planned," Han said.

"I don't like it," Beckett shook his head.

"Me neither," Qi'ra said, scanning the perimeter.

"You have to leave," The elder prisoner said suddenly, pulling down the cowl to unfurl the thickly coiled white braids of her hair, and the tumescent splotches of blaster scarring etched about her brown skin.

"They're coming," The Zabrak boy said, casting aside the cloak and letting a gust buoy the single braid amid his cropped black hair.

Beckett drew his blaster, "we'll have to buy Val some time to complete the decoupling."

Something about the curious pair of prisoners reminded him of war stories from the Clone Wars. Beckett sensed that they were not sellswords but patriots of a sort; Separatist holdouts or perhaps even vagrant disciples of the Order of the Whills outlawed by the Empire.

Against the whirling white flecks of snow, he barely noticed the battalion of Imperial stormtroopers emerging from the central rail car behind them. They looked like white insects swarming about the train, led by a svelte trooper clad in black. As ruby bolts of heated light illuminated the sky and wreaked havoc on his ears, he took cover alongside Han, Qi'ra and the two captives, who were more adept at returning fire than he expected. Han had brought plenty of extra munitions and spared a few E-11 blaster rifles he "borrowed" from some Imperials on his recent visit to Sullust. In a jarring silence, the firing suddenly ceased, and the dark-clad leader of the group closed in on them. To Beckett's alarm, the prisoners left the safety of their cover and walked out to meet the dark figure. From this vantage, Beckett could see that the Imperial officer was wearing a hammerhead shaped helmet, and that she brandished a ring-shaped instrument of a sort.

"Surrender yourself to the Emperor and we will spare your friends' lives, provided that they return the holocron at once." She said, her voice augmented by the helmet's apparatus.

The elder prisoner threw her blaster aside and whisked something silvery from the inner pocket of her robe. "We know of your kind, Sithling, and we know of your purpose."

The imperial agent gestured to the young Zabrak. "And does your master speak for you, young one? There may yet be a place for you at the Emperor's side if you help us find the others."

The Zabrak approached the agent, something in each of his hands. "We survived extinction and we will survive you, Inquisitor."

In a sudden flourish, the Master twirled her body with preternatural grace, a brand of golden light igniting from her hand. Following suit, her pupil brandished weapons of his own, two luminous beams of molten azure. Answering their taunt, the Inquisitor unleashed twin crimson blades from the ring-like apparatus in her hands. A mechanism lurched them into a state of gyration as they rose up to meet the blue and yellow brands of her foes. A volley of blaster bolts ensued as the legion of troopers resumed their assault.

"They're Jedi knights," Beckett said to a distraught Han and Qi'ra.

"They're about to be dead knights," Han said. "Come on, I have an idea." He said, gesturing to a power cell that he planned to use as an explosive.

"Beckett, you're hurt!" Qi'ra said.

"It's just a scratch." Beckett said. "I'll cover you, do whatever it is you two do."

In his peripheral vision, in stolen glances in and out of cover as he delivered suppressing fire, he glimpsed the frenetic dance of clashing laser swords, watching them as they closed in on his position.

"You are but echoes!" The Inquisitor wailed, as she leaped down upon her foes, the dual edges of her blades driving down to meet the pillars of blue and yellow light brandished by the Jedi.

"Not even history will notice your passing!" Just as she made her landing, the Zabrak apprentice, lunged upward with one of his cerulean sabers, breaking her weapon and knocking the Inquisitor down beneath him.

"One of the lost padawans. Remade into something foul." The Master said, pointing the tip of her golden laser weapon at the neck of the supine inquisitor, who was defenseless.

"Still so weak even now. Hampered by mercy. The light was your undoing. Have you learned nothing!?"

"She's afraid." The Zabrak said, reflecting a blaster bolt with the tips of his blades.

"Order your men to stand down!" The Master shouted, edging the yellow point of her sword closer to the Inquisitor's neck.

The Inquisitor's eyes narrowed, a mixture of fear and dread. "It's too late," she said, gesturing to the saber wound in her lower abdomen. "You trained him well."

"Now!" The voice of Han cut through the din of battle and he watched as Qi'ra hurled a makeshift bundle of explosives down the expanse of the train. In a blinding flash of blue-white, the bulk of the legion was hurled off the train into the treacherous heights below, and Beckett glimpsed the Inquisitor clinging to the edge of the train. The Master reached out to help, but the Inquisitor refused. "You're all going to die." She muttered, before letting herself plummet onto the tracks below.

"Did you see that!?" Han shouted, pointing to the explosion. "The kyber crystal was my idea," Qi'ra added. "But the power cell was pretty genius."

Beckett let them gloat to themselves while he returned fire. The Jedi now shifted their attention to the remainder of the stormtroopers, deflecting their laser missiles in mid-air and reversing them on their bewildered masters. With one careful swing of her arm, Beckett witnessed the master emit a burst of energy, a blast of kinetic ejecta that suspended the last of the troopers in the air before casting them to their doom.

"Did you see that? they -" Beckett said to Han, who was still gloating with Qi'ra and, he surmised, had entirely missed out on observing the supernatural feat.

Denying him a reprieve, two more troopers emerged from a hatch, one carrying a heavy repeater that was not standard requisition. Before he could decide which to shoot first, the trooper with the heavy cannon gunned down his partner in cold blood and ripped off his helmet, revealing the face of Val.

"All systems go," She said, still clutching the repeater.

"Hey Lady!" Beckett started. The two Jedi knights were transfixed by something in the horizon, something drawing toward them on the rocky plains, a single speeder bike, a swoop by the look of it.

"Another bounty hunter?" Beckett said to Han and Qi'ra.

Val aimed her blaster and started to fire. The pilot swerved out of range with prescient finesse, sustaining a collision course with the train, which vastly dwarfed it. The Jedi approached the group. Val called in to her alien accomplice via comlink to initiate the decoupling.

"I feel...cold," The Zabrak said, referring to something else besides the weather, Beckett surmised.

"The holocron, it's safe?" The Master asked.

"Yes, Maz should be receiving it shortly," Beckett replied.

"Go on and get to safety. There's no time to waste." The Master said approaching the second car.

"Where are you going genius?" Han shouted.

"What you did today protected our knowledge, our way of life." The Master said, "for that we owe you a great deal."

Val, joined by Qi'ra now that the speeder was in a closer firing range, continued to unsuccessfully fire upon the rider. "Go on without us. We'll hold this tide back."

"It's just one of them, against all of us? We've got more firepower."

"No, you don't," The Zabrak said coolly.

"Alright, if they want to stay here in paradise - let them stay. Can we get going please?" Han started.

Val called it in. The traincar lurched forward and careened slightly, knocking all of them on their feet. Val's comlink carried the voice of the alien to them.

"It's stuck, you'll have to override the command console on the center car."

Beckett rose to his feet, "I'm on it. You're all on cover fire duty if more of those imps show up."

Han locked eyes with him, his persistent smirk finally tapering into something a bit more serious. Beckett followed the Jedi toward the center car, his peripheral vision attending to the speeder bike and its rider, clad in black, a midnight cape roiling in the wake of mountain gales. Beckett could see that Val and the crew were still firing upon the phantom shape, its chrome glinting reminiscent of one of the Super Battle Droids from the Clone Wars. The swoop was nearly upon them, and the droid that steered it reached out one of its gloved hands in their direction.

Beckett found the controls and inserted a simple slice protocol that authorized the release of the valve. As flecks of snow parted across the expanse of the train, his eyes shot in Han's direction, and for a moment, they glimpsed each other as he gave them the thumbs up. The chrome plasteel plating shuddered as the rear car was unshackled, Beckett, recovering his footing, made for the caboose at a sprint, followed by the Jedi, when suddenly, the world reeled and quivered. The air was quickening, as if its molecules were being compressed, the fabric of matter contorting and collapsing under a weight of gravitic magnitude. He stole one final glance at his crew when he felt the ground, no, the train shift beneath him, until by an unseen blast, the magnetic turbolift mechanism failed and the vehicle was derailed, hurled violently on its side. As his field of view panned and yawed with the shifting ground beneath him, he could see the swoop pilot, its arms opening to the sky, fingers grasping and palms clutching, as if the whole bulk of the train were under its spell.

Beckett, having momentarily lost consciousness, awoke to a body broken and pinned on a bed of rocks and ice. The swoop bike lay cast on its side, abandoned, and its rider now approached the wreckage, where he could glimpse the two Jedi prisoners, no doubt kept alive by the same mystics that enabled them to levitate troopers. Close enough to finally see its cybernetic hulk up close, Beckett was stunned to hear it drawing breath, inhaling and exhaling through some sort of iron lung. A living creature resided within that black chrome mantle, a terror the likes of which even the Jedi feared, based on their defensive posture and their steady retreat onto a slab of ablative plating shed during the crash.

"The Holocron is far beyond your reach now, Sith," The Master said, her eyes remaining shut as the immense hulk approached. Even from this distance, he could see that fresh blood dribbled down her face.

"Your padawan is not." Its voice, more a tremor than a basso, cut through the acoustics of the windswept vale. With a simple reach of its arm, the Zabrak was plucked from his hiding place in the rubble, reeled in by unseen tethers, a quake of energy rippling in his wake. Suspended above the ground, within reach of the cybernetic abomination, the Zabrak cried out in terror. "Your master has failed to impress upon the true nature of the force," The being said. "Against the power of the dark side, there is no victory in the light."

"Release him!" The Master said, unfurling her golden blade, her fingers in her free hand clawing at the air, trying to wrest the Zabrak free from the thing's invisible clutches.

"Fear and hatred reside within you," The monster continued. "Yet you do not wield them."

The Zabrak, defiant but evidently fearful, managed to speak. "I am a Jedi, servant of the light, we know no fear,. Only peace, only stillness."

"Only through pain does the force reveal its true might," The Sith tightened the grip of his palm and Beckett could now hear the crushing of the boy's wind pipe amid shrill cries and gasps.

The Master, struggling to free her apprentice, watched helplessly as the fiend asphyxiated him to death until in one swift flourish, the creature released the Padawan, ignited a crimson brand of its own, and cut through flesh and torso in a bloodless act of dismemberment. The Zabrak fell in pieces before his Master's feet. Rather than mourning her lost apprentice, the Master lunged at the Sith, her yellow saber trailing its laser streak across the sky.

"At last, a fire kindles in you," The fiend said, the carmine plasma of his weapon crossing her own, the force of their clash emitting white sparks. "Surrender to it. Become its pupil. Only then can you destroy me."

The Master, calling on the force to aid her, summoned one of her Padawan's sabers into her right hand, and engaged the Sith with two brands instead of one. "Try as you might, but the light cannot be extinguished. The force yearns for it."

Exhausted and enraged, the Master missed her chance at a riposte, and in an instant, the red blade was upon her, melting away her arms into molten stumps. The Sith Lord took her weapon as his own, preparing to cross the blades along her neck to cleave

"You, too, were one of us, a Knight of the order...only fallen, deceived like so many of us. Do not be afraid, the light may yet find you again,"

The Sith vacillated momentarily, a glimmer of recognition or contemplation, a flutter of humanity. The gambit paid off, as the Jedi began to stir the matter with her shut eyes, coaxing the gusts into a concentrated stream, lunging the demon back and whirling the air into a dense coil of heat.

"I am the stillness, the might of the Sun!" The master shouted, irradiating the supercharged particles in the air. The heat seemed to sheer the creature's mechanical skin, which in turn, caused it to howl.

Beckett didn't wait for confirmation, that the sabers, now lodged firmly in the master's chest, had killed her. Instead, he made for the swoop bike with surprising swiftness and ignited the engines. The vehicle hooted as he accelerated to a near white-knuckle pace, until a jagged scarlet arc of light, spinning in the air, cleaved his vehicle and legs asunder. As his eyes shut for the last time, he imagined that the fiend, peering down at him with the retrieved flying saber in its hand, was amused that a mere mortal attempted to hijack its ride.


End file.
